Water shortages get potentially worse each season due to mindless population growth and the newer factor of anthropogenic global warming. The recent southern California fires are evidence of an increasingly parched future. Thankfully, the water issue makes headlines now and then. Below is one of the better articles because it mentions the root cause several times. Usually, you only get a sideways reference to the obvious driving factor.
The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.
Floridians use about 2.4 trillion gallons of water a year. The state projects that by 2025, the population will have increased 34 percent from about 18 million to more than 24 million people, pushing annual demand for water to nearly 3.3 trillion gallons...."We just passed a crossroads. The chief water sources are basically gone," said John Mulliken, director of water supply for the South Florida Water Management District. "We really are at a critical moment in Florida history."
Australia is in the midst of a 30-year dry spell, and population growth in urban centers of sub-Saharan Africa is straining resources. Asia has 60 percent of the world's population, but only about 30 percent of its freshwater.
[end quotes]Still, that article amounts to fact-reporting with no real solutions. It describes more desalination (which takes big energy), or reuse of waste water (more people keep generating more of it). The source of the whole mess; the perpetual increase of human numbers, is assumed to be a given, not an unnatural scourge.
Few planners have the will to suggest more BIRTH CONTROL (globally) as the solution to numerous supply/demand problems. They'll probably keep "mitigating" until the rivers run dry. Then there's the construction industry, which needs population growth like a vampire needs blood. Build it and they will come - and drink even more.
E.A.